News, articles and information about Jewish art, architecture, and historic sites. This blog includes material to be posted on the website of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments (www.isjm.org).

Even since I got involved with the rescue and restoration of Lost Shul Mural in Burlington, Vermont several years ago I've had my antennae up for other unknown or too little known examples of American synagogue wall painting. I recently wrote about the Walnut Street Shul in Chelsea, Massachusetts as an excellent and well-preserved example of an early 20th-century painted American immigrant synagogue. I documented the wall paintings there as part of an ongoing project of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments to identify and record the decoration of American synagogues.

A remarkable comparable example is the Congregation Sons of Jacob in Providence, Rhode Island, also listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which shares architectural and artistic elements with the Chelsea Shul, including well preserved wall paintings on the Ark wall and ceiling. The Providence synagogue is now part of the Rhode Island Jewish Museum, a new effort founded in 2016 to tell the Jewish immigrant story of Rhode Island. Presently, the Museum is more concept and website than actuality, but the organizers have ambitious plans to restore the synagogue as a centerpiece. While there are have some events at the synagogue connected to the Museum at present there are no exhibitions or other forms of information available beyond what is online. I was very fortunate to have Harold Silverman, president of the congregation, give me a top to bottom tour of the building. It is due to the efforts of Mr. Silverman and a few others that the place still stands and the lights still shine. Much work is needed to preserve the synagogue for the future, but the small congregation has steadfastly kept the building - and its Jewish use and identity - intact (I'll report more on the progress of the museum in future posts).

Founded in 1896 on Shawmut Street and now located on
Douglas Avenue, Sons of Jacob is the oldest Orthodox Jewish congregation in
Providence, and the only synagogue still in use in the historic Smith Hill
neighborhood. The ground floor was built in 1906 and the sanctuary was designed
in 1922 by Harry Marshak. From 1923 through 1936 Congregation president Sam
Shore oversaw the decoration of the sanctuary, apparently painting some of the
work himself, such as the Zodiac signs which surround the large central field
of the ceiling – a open cloud-streaked sky. A history of the congregation can be read here.

These
Orthodox shuls in Chelsea and Providence just barely survived the
widespread demolition of Jewish neighborhoods for the construction of
highways in the 1960s and 1970s. Both buildings officially house active congregations. But these are tiny groups that
must struggle to maintain a minyan for services and the fund the
ever-mounting expenses of maintain a large old building. Champions of
all three synagogues are looking at ways to preserve them for another
century, in not as active synagogues, then at least as museums or
historical sites following the model of New York City's Eldridge Street
Synagogue and a few other successful examples. Ideally religious
services will continue alongside other activities, but how this can
happen and who will fund the restoration and maintenance of the buddings
remains to be seen.

Congregation Sons of Jacob in Providence is a two story brick structure that now sits precariously close to the Interstate 95 (I-95) highway that slices through the city. It now faces the I-95, and significantly for an Orthodox Synagogue (but not unusually in American cities) its Ark is placed against the west wall. The outside of the synagogue is dignified, and shows its stained glass windows along its northern flank facing Douglas Avenue, it is the inside the really counts.

The ground floor Beth Midrash and other facilities are well preserved, and this is where most daily and weekly worship takes place. I hope that whatever necessary repairs and changes are made in the future, that this space remain little changed. It is a now-rare example of the combination of religious and social space of the immigrant shul, that allowed these institutions to serve as places of worship, but also as places of social gathering for Yiddish-speaking immigrants still adapting to the pressures and uncertainties of the New World. There may be a temptation to modernize this space, or to clear parts of it entirely to for exhibition or events...but any changes should be careful and modest.

The most striking feature of the sanctuary is its many
murals. Above the ark is a mural depicting two lions supporting a tablet
bearing the Commandments. The painting is framed by a wooden arch made to look
like marble, beyond which and surmounting the ark is painted to
resemble blue sky framed by red curtains tied with gold cord to columns at the
sides.Such curtains are common elements in painted synagogues in Europe and America and recall of the Parochet of the Jerusalem Temple, but also serve as theatrical curtains often opening to reveal celestial or paradisaical landscapes..

There are four painting of animals above the
windows of the upper part of the Ark wall; depicted are the deer,
the lion, the eagle, and the tiger. These animals refer, of course, to the passage in the Pirkei Avot / Wisdom of the Fathers (5:23):

Judah ben Teima used to say: Be strong as the leopard, swift as the
eagle, fleet as the gazelle, and brave as the lion to do the will of
your Father in Heaven. He also used to say: The impudent are for Gehenna
and the affable for Paradise. (He used to pray): May it be thy will, O
Lord our God and God of our fathers, that the Temple be rebuilt speedily
in our days, and grant our portion in your Torah.

Each of the animals is shown in an active pose set in an appropriate landscape setting.

More expressive as art are two landscape paintings the flank the Ark near its base, just above some enclosed boxes that carry electrical equipment. These are paradisaical landscapes, or might represent the Holy Land, in which case the lakes might be the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. These are no polished works, but seem to be more than mere copies of known works or photos. The loose brushwork suggests that the painter thought og himself as an artist, more than a mere ropiest. Unfortunately, we still known nothing about the process of choosing and making these images. There are some landscapes paintings on the sides of an Ark in Beth Midrash downstairs, which recall the ark paintings, but are done in a finer hand, perhaps the same artist who painted the clouded skies on the Ark wall and ceiling.

Looking up again, there is a painted border around the central
ceiling section with twelve images set in cartouche-like frames representing the months of the
year embellished with the signs of the zodiac. Within the continuous border, the
ceiling is covered with painted
clouds. Several examples of trompe-l'oeil painting are evident throughout the large room.

The area from which the chandelier hangs is painted to
approximate an elaborate medallion, similar to what we saw at the Walnut Street Shul in Chelsea, but also a common elements in ceiling painting in theaters, ballrooms and all sorts of elaborate interiors of this period. The fronts of the women's gallery are painted to suggest inlaid
marble panels, while the posts supporting the gallery are painted to resemble
marble columns

Sam Shore, congregation president from 1923 to 1936, who was
"artistically inclined," supervised the painting of the sanctuary and is said to have painted the mazoles (symbols of the twelve Jewish months) himself. No
one now remembers who painted the rest of the murals. It is worth noting that unlike at some other American Orthodox shuls, only the traditional figure if the water carrier designating Aquarius has been replaced by a non-figurative image - the well. Elsewhere the humans mingle with animals, and in the case of Sagittarius, the half-man half-horse centaur is used as the symbol. The figure of Gemini - two children on a see-saw - is especially endearing and American.

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This blog provides news and opinion articles about Jewish art, architecture and historic sites - especially those where something new is happening. Developed in connection with news gathering for the International Survey of Jewish Monuments website (www.isjm.org), this blog highlights some of the most interesting Jewish sites around the world, and the most pressing issues affecting them.